


Our love's the perfect crime

by ANTchan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Peggy Carter, Bucky Barnes Feels, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Developing Relationship, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, HYDRA Reveal, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, On the Run, Peggy and Bucky's Epic Road Trip to Destroy HYDRA, Peggy eventually gets that dance, Pining, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers Feels, Time Travel, Time Traveling Peggy Carter, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, everyone needs a damn hug, these idiots have been pining for literal decades
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2020-12-16 23:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21044474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ANTchan/pseuds/ANTchan
Summary: Peggy Carter - Founder of SHIELD. Director of SHIELD 1947-1950. Killed in laboratory accident at Camp Lehigh, February 1950. Body never recovered.OrAn au where Peggy has an unfortunate accident in SHIELD's lab involving the Tesseract and Hank Pym's experimental particles, and is never seen again. Until she reappears once more in 2013 in the abandoned Camp Lehigh, just in time for Zola to give her his rousing "HYDRA has won" speech.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Everyone else has all the time traveling fun, why not Peggy?" is the question I asked myself. The second question I asked myself was "How pissed would Peggy be to find out that HYDRA had infiltrated her organization?" And then this fic was born!! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. <3
> 
> Special thank yous to, of course, [rogueshadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueshadows) and [SassySnowPerson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DramaticEntrance) for being constant moral support and my fic-sharing trifecta buddies. Thanks also to [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79) for beta'ing this chapter!
> 
> Title is from "I Wanna" by All-American Rejects
> 
> _Tonight I'm weak  
It's just another day without you that I can't sleep  
I gave away the world for you to hear me say  
Don't throw me away_

\--------------------1--------------------

**New York City - 2011**

“You gonna be okay?” the man Steve will later know as Nick Fury asks him.

Steve gazes around at the nearly foreign landscape that New York has become, and can only answer: “Yeah, I just… I had a date." 

As if that one sentence can even begin to explain what feels like a fist-sized hole in his ribs, battering his internal organs every time he tries to take a breath. 

Sixty-six years. Gone.

The last time Steve had closed his eyes, the Arctic had been rising up to meet him, shattering the windscreen of the Valkyrie. The last time he’d closed his eyes, he’d been accepting his own fate, had been sending a final goodbye. _‘Looks like I’m not making that dance. I’m sorry, Peggy. I’m sorry I didn’t make it out, Buck. I promised I would. I’m sorry. I’m--’_

Then he’d opened his eyes to find the death he’d made peace with hadn’t happened after all, and that everything has changed.

But Steve Rogers is used to death. Even before he’d gone to war, he’d heard his last rites more times than most, back when his entire body rebelled against him, when his lungs couldn’t catch air, when his fever wouldn’t break.

So Steve does what he’s always done when faced with perspective shattering events: he squares his shoulders and does what needs to be done.

It can’t be worse than giving himself over to a supersoldier program, or facing down great and terrible weapons from HYDRA, or watching Schmidt disintegrate into nothingness before his eyes. Can it?

For months SHIELD teaches him about the things he’s missed in this brave new world; about history and technology and social change - about military tactics, diplomacy, and current events until his head spins. They also assign him a psychiatrist, which means something vastly different in the future than it had in the 40s. Mostly the man just asks him questions and Steve quickly learns what the correct answers are. (Steve isn’t sure he actually fools Dr. Liang, who only watches him with a passive, patient expression, and assigns his next round of “homework” before their next appointment.)

Steve stares the future in the face with unflinching resolve. But the moment that truly, completely throws him? 

It isn’t being faced with the shiny new buildings of the city or the gleaming lights at all hours. New York is still New York. The buildings are a little taller, the streets a little more crowded, the places he knew gone or changed, but it still _feels_ like New York. It isn’t a world where the technology has changed so much that it’s practically changed the language that everyone around him speaks. The war had been a breeding ground for new technology, even without Howard Stark having a breakthrough every other day.

No, it’s this:

It’s Agent Coulson coming to visit his SHIELD-sanctioned apartment after three months out of the ice, something solemn hidden behind his typically impassive expression. It’s the files in his hands, the names on each tab carving themselves into Steve’s soul every time he looks at them.

_James Morita. Gabriel Jones. Timothy Dugan. James Montgomery Falsworth. Jacques Dernier. Chester Phillips._

_Howard Stark._

_James Buchanan Barnes. Margaret Carter._

Coulson’s smile is small and apologetic when he sets them on Steve’s table. Steve gazes at them for too long, feeling like all the air has been sucked from the room. “I know we told you after you woke up, Captain Rogers.” _Told him that he’s the last one. That they’re all dead and gone now._ “But this is everything we have on each of the Commandos after the war. They’re yours to keep.”

The files stay where they are for days before Steve finds the will to look at them. He spreads them out across the table, gingerly holding each one as if it’s going to come alive and bite him.

Chester Phillips - Founder of SHIELD, Head of Operations. Died early 1970, of heart complications at the age of ninety-four on SHIELD property. No surviving family. _‘Didn’t stop until the day you died. Never could leave a job half finished, could you Colonel?’_

Jim Morita - Senior Agent of SHIELD. Died 1987, cancer, age sixty-eight. His grandson is located in New York, though, running a specialized high school in Midtown. _‘Did you go back and find your girl? Did you get your family out of that camp? Did you settle down with them? Or did you jump right back into war?’_

Dum-Dum Dugan - Senior Agent of SHIELD. Died 1959, lung cancer, age forty-seven. His grandchildren still live on the west coast. _‘Those cigars of yours did it, huh? We never knew how bad those were.’_

Gabe Jones - Director of SHIELD, 1965-1980. Died early 2011 at the age of ninety-three, surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, including current SHIELD Agent Antoine Triplett. _‘We were so close to meeting again. If only they’d found me a few months sooner.’_

Monty Falsworth - United Kingdom SHIELD liaison, Special Agent Union Jack. Died 1962, casualty of Operation Talisman saving the lives of civilians, age forty-eight. No surviving family. _‘You went out like a hero. You always said you would.’_

Jacques Dernier - Retired from French Resistance to Collobrières. Died 1975, construction accident, age sixty-four. Three great-grandchildren still live in Marseille. _‘You got your country back and you went home, just like you wanted. Good job, Jackie.’_

Howard Stark - Founder of SHIELD, Head of Research and Development. Director of SHIELD, 1950-1965. Died 1991, car accident, age seventy-four. Left his company to his son, Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, who has a file all his own tucked away in one of Steve’s bookshelves. _‘Howard… they told me the expedition that found me was one of yours. That you wrote it into SHIELD protocol to send one out every year. Thank you, Howard. I’m sorry.’_

His hand hovers over the file marked _James Buchanan Barnes_ for long time. He already knows what will be there. Doesn’t have to read it to know that it will say _KIA, February 1st, 1945. _But if he has to look at the words, Steve thinks he might become physically sick. He isn’t sure he can take finding out what happened to Bucky’s parents, or his little sisters after the war. _‘They could still be alive, right? Bea and Elena were only twelve when we left. Becca was only sixteen.’_

Steve doesn’t open the file, his hands shaking as they move to the last one. _Margaret Carter._

Peggy.

He knows some of what he’ll find inside here too, just from the things he’s seen and heard already. _Peggy Carter. Founder of SHIELD. First Director of SHIELD_. The first time he’d seen her portrait in the foyer of the New York SHIELD base, pride had made his heart swell in his chest. It’s the other things he’s not so sure about. He isn’t sure if he can read about the life she made for herself afterwards, not without feeling like he’s going to shatter apart right here in his SHIELD-assigned apartment.

Steve prepares himself for what he’ll find inside the innocuous file - a family? A husband? A life of adventures? A calm, peaceful retirement? His mind runs through countless scenarios, each more vivid and bittersweet than the last.

It makes what is actually in the file all the more startling.

Peggy Carter - Founder of SHIELD. Director of SHIELD 1947-1950. Killed in laboratory accident at Camp Lehigh, February 1950. Body never recovered.

And just like that, it feels like Steve is in freefall, the air punched from his lungs in a dizzying rush. The file slips from his nerveless fingers. He reads the words over and over again, turning them over in his mind as if they’ll suddenly rearrange themselves. They don’t.

The guilt hits him all at once.

How could he be so bitter and _jealous_? How could he think that Peggy finding happiness or meaning would have been worse than this?

She never got the chance to do any of it.

A shudder rolls through him, his breath hitching around something that sounds dangerously like a sob to his own ears. “Christ, Peggy…” Steve pushes a hand through his hair, his head bowing.

Bucky, Peggy, himself. None of them, he realizes, ever really got to come home from the war.

It’s the first time he cries since that night at the bar, trying to drink until he could no longer see Bucky fall every time he closed his eyes. It’s either the first time in three months or sixty-six years. He can no longer tell the difference.

\--------------------2--------------------

**Camp Lehigh, Wheaton, New Jersey - February 1st, 1950**

It has been said before that Peggy Carter doesn’t know when to quit. Frequently said. Most often by the man standing in front of her.

Howard Stark throws his hands in the air. “Do you ever get tired of being so unshakably _moral?_”

From behind her desk, Peggy shoots him an impassive look. If they were anywhere but tucked away in her office, behind closed doors, she would have several things to say about his insubordination. “Not in the least,” she says blandly. “And the answer is still: No.”

“Zola has ideas that SHIELD can use.”

“Arnim Zola,” Peggy barely keeps the snarl out of her voice, “is a Nazi. And I will not have him on SHIELD grounds. Or any grounds, if I had my way.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not the only one who gets to have an opinion on this, Peg. The men upstairs say previously Nazi-affiliated scientists get their chance to make amends and work for the good guys--”

“If you honestly believe that to be the reasoning behind this, Howard, then your outrageous parties have rattled those supposedly genius brains of yours.”

“Of course I don’t-- I don’t trust him either, but we don’t have to trust Zola for him to be of use. We need every advantage we can get to keep one up on the Russians, Peg. You know that!”

“Not by compromising our morals.”

“To hell with morals! We need results, _Director_.” Howard leans his hands on the edge of her desk, his eyes narrowed, taking up her space as if she were not his direct superior. The _arrogance _of this man. “I know you try to lead this organization as if you were Steve, Peggy, but we don’t need--”

He jolts back as she rises to her feet. “I do _not_,” Peggy starts, her voice low and dangerous, “run this organization seeking the approval of a dead man, Mister Stark.” She ignores the twist just under her ribs as she says the words, but her gaze doesn’t waver from Howard’s. “I run this organization in a way that will protect people from men like Zola. That has always been the goal. I would _appreciate _if you could remember that.” Her eyes, despite her best efforts, flick down to the frames lining one corner of the desk. Her shoulders slump imperceptibly. “You decided to bring this to me today of all days, Howard? Really?”

Howard’s expression screws up, and Peggy can actually see his mind flying through dates and events. She bites back a sigh as he frowns. “Steve’s anniversary isn’t for another few days, isn’t it? What day is it?”

“It’s the 1st, Howard. Barnes’ anniversary. Steve isn’t the only one we lost - is five years all it takes to forget that?” 

It shouldn't be so gratifying to watch Howard flinch at her words as sure as if she'd struck him. But it is, and so is watching his perpetual showman's mask slip and reveal the crushing guilt. "Jesus, Peg, I…" The silence falls heavy between them. Howard makes no move to actually apologize, and Peggy makes no move to excuse him. 

(Howard is her friend, has been for many years. But the one thing Peggy has never done is make excuses for him.)

"Is that why everyone is coming early, instead of on the 5th?" he asks at length.

"Yes, Howard. Everyone will be here; even Dernier is on his way from France."

"No shit. Jackie's coming?"

"It's been five years," is the only answer she gives. Peggy watches him not-quite-squirm under her gaze for a bit. She takes pity on him in the end. "We're meeting at the pub on ninth and main tonight. We won't go down to Arlington until Steve's anniversary so we can see both of the memorials."

Howard hesitates for a second too long. Her jaw starts to clench, keeping the acidic _I’m sorry, Howard, did you have plans?_ from leaving her mouth. He surprises her this time, though. “I’ll be there,” he says, with a hint of something close to shame.

Peggy eases back into her seat. “Thank you, Howard. I’ll see you in the lab at… around 14:00, say?” 

“Of course, yeah.” For once, Howard takes her dismissal for what it is. His chronic allergy to remorse and humility is doubtlessly behind his quick escape. He stops just as he reaches the door, running a hand over his dark hair for a curious moment. “Peg?” he calls, turning just enough to look at her. “I shouldn’t have brought it up today.”

It’s as close to an apology that she’s heard from him in years.

“Thank you for understanding,” is all she says in return.

Peggy waits until the door closes behind him to let out the breath she’s been holding. And with it comes the weight pressing in on her from all sides, a too-familiar constriction, like her skin has been stretched too tight over her bones. With a sigh, she sets the pen down and sinks back into her chair.

It has been said that Peggy Carter doesn’t know when to quit.

They’d be right. But it’d be more accurate to say that she doesn’t know _how _to quit.

“Five years,” she murmurs. Everything has changed in these last five years, and yet, things are still the same as ever. There’s always another battle for her to fight, another goal to work towards, and if Peggy was more honest with herself, she would admit that she doesn’t really know how to stop. Her life for the last eleven years, let alone the last five, has been nothing but a train hurtling up a mountain, faster and faster until she’s unsure when or how she’ll reach the peak. At eighteen, she’d been a simple codebreaker, then an MI5 operative, then an advisor to the SSR, then a Special Agent, and now…

Director of SHIELD, and she’s not even thirty yet. She finds herself blissfully unattached, wed only to her career, so far away from the life she’d planned for herself as a girl. And that doesn’t bother her at all, really. She matches her judgmental neighbor’s glares with sharp smiles - starts each morning by looking and the mirror and gleefully thinking, _‘Peggy Carter, you are one step away from a certifiable spinster.’_

That’s not to say that she’s never considered it - finding someone to share her life with. There had been Angie. And Daniel. Both of whom she counts as her close friends. But every time she thinks about focusing on something other than _the fight_, she just…

Her eyes drift to the corner of the desk, as they always do at this time of the year. (As they do on most days.) Three simple wood frames sit, perfectly aligned, holding all of the most important of her memories, her reasons for fighting. The first is a group shot of all of them outside the SSR headquarters in London. It’s the most formal of the three, with Steve and the Howling Commandos in the center, with herself, Howard, and Colonel Phillips flanking them. Her team. Her family. The second, the largest of the three, is the one that will never fail to make her heart ache. _Steve_. Steve as she’d met him at this very base, sharp and slight and full of fire. And the third…

The third is the smallest of the frames, half hidden between the two. Peggy reaches over to take it, fingers tracing the edges of the frame as she pulls it towards her. It’s one of the few that the damn war office did not want, that was deemed _unsuitable_ for their blasted propaganda. (“_We couldn’t… Director Carter, don’t you see?There would be questions…”)_ So it’s hers now, perhaps the only copy in existence, depending on what they did with the negatives. But that suits her just fine.

It’s the only photo she’s seen from during the war where James Barnes is smiling.

It was taken when they were filming for one of the newsreels, Peggy is sure. A rare moment of levity, Steve and Barnes standing side-by-side as they spoke with the journalist who had been visiting their camp that day. The photographer had caught something even rarer than Barnes’ smile (not the false, brittle grin that he’d been likely to give on any other day). He’d caught Barnes’ eyes on Steve, caught the look of open admiration and wonder, the warmth and misery, caught something profound and tragic in Barnes’ expression.

Honestly, Peggy had never related to James Barnes more than in that moment.

Her fingers caress down the glass, tracing Steve’s profile and then tapping gently at Barnes’ face in the photo. “What would you have to say about all this, Sergeant? I wonder… you’d probably tell me I was being foolish.”

_“Keep scowlin’ like that, Agent Carter, and your face is gonna get stuck that way. You’re already scary enough to send the Nazi’s running, you don’t need anymore help.”_

She hums, sets the photograph back on the desk, and forces her focus back on the work at hand. There’s always work to be done at SHIELD, perfect for keeping her mind away from roads not travelled and friends lost.

As promised, Peggy goes to meet Howard in his lab at two o’clock sharp. Not that Howard notices her arrival (or the time, more than likely). She finds him deep in conversation with the young Hank Pym. By the look of both of them, they’ve skipped lunch and are running purely on caffeine and science.

“Howard, please remember that we need Doctor Pym whole and with his mental faculties intact,” Peggy announces. The young man jumps to perfect attention and she smothers a smile. “No breaking the bright young minds of SHIELD.”

Howard turns with an easy smile on his face, their previous argument seemingly forgotten. “Director!” he answers with his arms gesturing widely. “Just trying to get as much out of him before he leaves us for his army training. Here, here!” Howard waves her further in. “I’ll show you what we’ve been doing.”

She lets Howard guide her around the lab with a flourish, casting an eye around as the lab techs - including Pym - eye her nervously. “Have you been telling tales again, Howard?” she quips.

“Always. You know the one about you _opening fire_ in my lab is a favorite of mine.”

“_Howard._”

His smirk is so wicked that Peggy wants to knock it right off his smug face. The utter _prat._ “Nothing wrong with putting a little fear into the minions, Peg.”

Peggy’s eyes narrow. “Be careful or else it will be you I’ll be shooting at next.”

“Promises, promises.” She doesn’t roll her eyes at his blatant flirtation, but it’s a near thing. She gestures at the nearby display table to move him along. “For your perusal, Director, SHIELD Sci-Tech has some goodies for you to try.” He hands her the first object, a metal disc as large as her palm, thicker than a makeup compact. With some prompting from Howard, she clicks it open, eyebrows lifting at the tiny black screen inside. “The goal is to have these the size of a foundation compact and a pocket watch for general use,” Howard demonstrates, holding up a smaller disc, the size of a dollar coin. “It’s a limited range tracker, good for twenty miles. By the time we can have these out to the field agents, it’ll be double that.”

Peggy turns it over in her hands as Howard continues with his presentation, showing off countless new gadgets and toys for their agents to use. One, a round metal bauble reminiscent of their stun grenades, he attempts to grab from her hand, huffing: "No, no, not that one. How did this get in-- ignore it, Peg, it’s a prototype.” She slips it into her pocket for the time being.

She's examining the last of them, the stun baton, when her eyes catch on the sequence of lights across the handle. They would mean nothing to her, if not for the fact that they give off a particular blue glow.

A very _specific_ blue glow. One that sends her instincts screaming and her mind conjuring phantoms of darkened corridors and flashes of blue light. Of the whine of charging weapons and the screams of dying men.

“Howard,” she says slowly, “what’s powering this?” 

His eyes pass over her and the stun baton. _Too casual_. Peggy immediately bristles. “Got an experimental power source I’m developing. Big potential, but costly and inefficient. But this--”

“Howard, this had better not be what it looks like.”

“Does it look like a new power source for--”

“Did you,” she bites out, waving the stun baton in his direction. “Bring the Tesseract. Out of containment.”

“Technically, no.” Howard gives her an insolent little grin. “It’s perfectly contained… two rooms over.”

For a moment, Peggy viciously considers smacking him with the stun baton. Something of the desire must flare behind her eyes, because the smug look on Howard’s face withers just a bit.

“Peggy, it’s fine--”

She turns on heel and stalks through the lab, the techs scurrying out of her warpath. Howard calls after her, an exasperated: “Peggy, come on!” She pays it no mind, her course set through the labyrinth of the SHIELD labs. 

The humming reaches her ears even before she finds the room - the resonate pulse, like a beast breathing in the dark. Schmidt had coveted it as a god, but the Tesseract is exactly that: a _monster. _The power it promised is not a blessing, it’s a curse. And the icy glow is only a temptation for men who think they can control it.

Like the man that jogs up behind her, nearly sliding into her in the doorway.

“See, there,” Howard chuckles from over her shoulder, “it’s contained.”

“You call _this_ contained?” Peggy gestures at the metal frame the damned artifact is encased in, not even behind glass. Just sitting in the open inside the lab. “What were you thinking, Howard? You took it out of containment without notifying me--”

“I’m the head of R&D, I don’t need--”

“I am the Director of this organization!” she snarls back at him. “That is a Class 5 artifact, a danger to you and I and anyone in this lab. And you just leave it lying about? It should be contained at all times! Howard, you are better than this.” They should have just left the damn thing in the ocean. They couldn’t even find Steve’s body to give him a proper burial, but that _thing_ gets to sit in their storage vaults. In their labs. Peggy steels her nerves, forcing that line of thinking away, and instead waves a hand at the row of vials and equipment sitting on a counter nearby. “What’s this?”

“It’s mine, Director Carter.” Hank Pym joins them in the doorway, his agitation evident in every movement. It’s not quite the same nervous fluster as the rest of their scientists, many of whom are older and more experienced than Pym. There’s only a hint of nerves as he slips past them towards the counter, physically putting himself between them and his work. Protective, bright, confident, even a bit suspicious.

She’ll have to watch this one. If they can get him to return as a consultant, he will either be a great asset, or great trouble. Likely, a bit of both.

“My experiments are secure,” Pym continues crisply.

Peggy clenches her jaw, eyeing the row of red vials and then the dangerously exposed Tesseract. “And what is it that you’re working on, Doctor Pym?”

It’s Howard who answers, cutting Pym off before he can even get a word out. “The kid has some idea about altering the distance between atoms. Thinks he can make a man shrink to the size of an ant, if you can believe that.”

Pym squares his shoulders at Howard’s almost dismissive explanation. “It can do more than that! With some tests, we could interact with the universe on a subatomic scale--”

“Dream big, kid, you’ve got a long way to go before you get that far.”

Pym bristles at that, and Peggy holds up a hand before this nonsense can go any further. “Howard, we’re not here to debate Doctor Pym’s project.”

“Right you are. We’re here to talk about the groundbreaking tests we’re working on this baby.” Howard moves forward, patting a machine sitting in the middle of the room. She doesn’t need to ask what it does, with the thick cables coming off it, snaking up to the Tesseract’s housing. “Seriously, Peggy, you’ve got nothing to worry about. We’ve been getting readings on its energy output and it’s getting more efficient and safer every time. The things we could learn from it! Peggy, we could revolutionize so much - electronics, weapons - we could power the whole country with this thing…”

Save her from the egotism of genius industrialists. “It’s not our place to do those things,” she says firmly. “There are plenty of brilliant minds who can do that all on their own, Howard. We’re here to protect the world from people like HYDRA, who saw the Tesseract as the answer to all of their problems as well.”

HYDRA also had their own scientist who had actually been successful at extracting energy from the Tesseract: Zola.

_‘Damnit, Howard.’_

“We’re not the only ones with access to Tesseract energy,” Howard argues. He’s fiddling with the controls on the machine in front of him and Peggy’s heart leaps into her throat. “We also weren’t the only ones taking out HYDRA bases during the war! Intel says the Russians had captured at least one base on the Eastern front. But they don’t have the real thing. If we can study it, we can stop whatever they’re planning-- look, I’ll show you. It’s perfectly--”

“Howard, do _not_\--”

“--safe. The machine is energy shielded. Just put these on--”

Pym shifts uncomfortably by his own equipment. “I think I’ll just leave…?”

The machine crackles to life just as Peggy crosses the room towards it and Howard. The Tesseract’s hum rises in pitch, making her skin crawl. “Howard, shut if off!” she calls over the noise. His response is to shove a pair of goggles at her, his face lit up in the eerie blue glow of the Tesseract. 

Peggy can see how this is all going to end, with only two options. Either in spectacular failure, or… Howard will succeed, and it will only fuel his drive further.

Honestly, she’d rather have the failure.

Her hand is on one of the cables coming off Howard’s machine, twisting and pulling, desperate to stop this before it all goes too far. Except there’s a hiss of air and Howard’s choked, “Peg, no!” The cable rips out of her hand in a burst of pressure from the machine. She barely manages to get out of the way as it whips across the room, crashing into tables and lab equipment as it goes. The ominous shattering of glass has Peggy whipping around on high alert.

There’s a puddle of red liquid and glass shards on the floor. Pym crouches over his ruined creation, his face blank in shock and horror. His hand stretches out towards the broken vials, but Peggy calls out to him: “Doctor Pym! Stay where you are.”

_‘Lab safety!’ _her mind reels. _‘Do these men know nothing about lab safety?’_

There’s movement in her peripheral. The Tesseract housing has been knocked across the counter by the failing cable, leaning dangerously to one side. Peggy’s heart leaps into her throat, her body in motion even before her mind fully registers the tipping tangle of metal. 

The metal frame clatters onto the table with an awful sound, rolls against the edge, slicking through more of the red solution pooling on the counter.

The Tesseract slips from the crumpled steel casing and goes tumbling towards the floor. Towards Hank Pym’s kneeling form. Peggy shoulders the young scientist back, her hands scrambling--

She catches the Cube in her bare hands.

The room is completely silent. Even the Tesseract itself is eerily, suspiciously quiet.

It’s cold in her hands, light, and oddly malleable. Wet from whatever was in the vials.

“Shit… Peggy, don’t move. I’m coming to get it.” There’s shuffling behind her, equipment being tossed aside as Howard frantically searches. She doesn’t look, her eyes trained on the too-tempting glow of the Cube, the slither of something beneath the surface that almost looks alive. “Just hold on!”

“Howard,” she snaps, her voice tight with mounting panic, “I’m not going anywhere. Just _hurry,_ please.” It’s too late. Peggy knows it in her next breath, in her bones. The Tesseract’s glowing innards spin tighter and faster, the otherworldly humming beginning anew and with such force that Peggy has to clench her teeth. She turns, broken glass crunching beneath her heels, her eyes skittering over the room to meet Howard’s equally horrified face. “Run!”

At the same time, Howard backpedals. “Lock down the lab! Lock it down!” He waves a hand at Pym, who dives for the wall away from her, his fist coming down on the large alarm button there. Howard, on the other hand, moves closer rather than away. He’s pulling his labcoat off, his eyes alight in steely panic - what is he thinking? Is he planning to just snatch it from her? To throw his labcoat over the Tesseract?

There’s no time for that.

“_Howard!_”

Her cry is swallowed by the ungodly sound coming off the Tesseract. Her hands are frozen around it, even as her mind screams to drop it, to escape, to _run_. Her body doesn’t listen, paralyzed where she stands. The world bursts into light around her, swallowing her up. It feels like something hooks behind her ribcage and _pulls_ and Peggy can’t breathe. 

There’s a single moment that lasts an eternity, where she fights for breath, where it feels like she’s being pulled in every direction at once. And then Peggy tumbles to the floor beneath her, her knees jarring against the cold, dusty concrete, her lungs aching as she struggles to fill them. She stays there for a while, shaking and gasping in the dust and the dark.

Finally, Peggy lifts her head, the panic still coursing through her. She’s still in the lab. The table she’d collapsed next to is the same. The layout of the lab is just as it had been before this had happened. But there’s no broken glass beneath her, no sparking machine, no SHIELD technicians or scientists. No Tesseract.

Everything is dark, cold, and quiet. And covered in layers of dust.

“Howard?”

**END CHAPTER 1.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two years out of the ice and no less than two alien invasions later, New York is finally beginning to be _home _for Steve again.
> 
> So why can't he let go?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii! Welcome back to time traveling and FEELS. I'm so, so, so blown away by the love you guys showed for the first chapter of this fic. Thank you SO much! 
> 
> As always, a special thank you to [rogueshadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueshadows) and [SassySnowPerson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DramaticEntrance) for your constant support and love! And a huge thank you to [Wiggle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiggle/pseuds/Wiggle) and [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79) for beta'ing and looking this chapter over/giving me support and laughs that keep me going!

\--------------------1---------------------

**Avengers Tower, New York City - 2013**

Two years out of the ice and no less than two alien invasions later, New York is finally beginning to be _home _for Steve again. His life has taken turns that he could never have imagined. He has his own floor in the tower that he’d once scorned, has an apartment that’s all clean, warm lines and all of the tech that’s common in this century now, as well as some tech that _isn’t_. It’s a far cry from the lonely apartment SHIELD had given him at first.

Steve has managed to find purpose, a home, friends. Even managed to adjust to this new time faster than anyone expected him to.

Of course, it’s hard not to when the Avengers are being shuffled from one crisis to the next, from the Battle of New York to the interdimensional Convergence in London and, more recently, hunting down any alien tech that had disseminated through the black market. Add in all of the publicity appearances and charity events and briefings, briefings, and more briefings…

It doesn’t leave Steve with too much downtime, makes him have to roll with the punches. Which is good. Great, even. He hates not having something to do.

Which is why he’s here, in the Tower’s strategy room pouring over footage of the mission they’d just returned from. He’s the well-adjusted leader of a superhero team with a lot of work to do, and it’s a perfectly reasonable way to spend the evening. He’s definitely not hiding from his teammates.

Definitely not.

“JARVIS, playback from 13:57, please,” Steve requests, holding a hand up to the projection and shifting the view slightly with a swipe of his fingers. This part of technology’s advancement, Tony’s tech in particular, never fails to amaze him. Reading mission reports and file after file of intel like he did before the ice was one thing. Relying on the eidetic memory the serum had gifted him with was one thing. Now, thanks to the combination of everyone’s communicators and Tony’s drone cameras, Steve can see every angle of the battle, can see everywhere that he wasn’t, can see where they need improvement, can see his own mistakes.

Steve considers the footage for a while, plays it back from every angle he can think of, watching each of his teammates through the battle. Tony and Sam have greatly improved in their teamwork. They’re not quite as cohesive of an aerial team as Tony and Colonel Rhodes are yet, but then, you can’t grow that same kind of chemistry in just a few short months.

Natasha and Thor also made an unexpectedly effective duo this time around. Thor still hasn’t quite mastered the art of going up against unpowered, if dangerously equipped, humans yet; the Asgardian prince is still gunning for a fight on super-powered terms and is more likely to toss their enemies through several walls. In this instance, though, it served them well. Because this time their enemies were so focused on the unstoppable force that is Thor that they weren’t expecting Natasha’s scarily efficient, lightning fast takedowns.

Scott Lang has been a welcome recent addition to the team as well. He’s still (somewhat clumsily) finding his role in the group, but he and Clint have taken to experimenting with enthusiasm. Steve zooms in and catches sight of Ant-Man perched on the end of one of Clint’s arrows. Unorthodox, a little bit crazy. But effective.

His team is working together. _Growing_ together. And maybe they’re not the team, _the family_, Steve was ripped from, but they’re his now, and they matter to him.

“_Captain Rogers, I’d like to warn you that Sir is in the elevator heading to this floor._”

Steve’s hand pauses over the holoprojection and he quirks a brow in the direction of the ceiling. “Warn me? JARVIS, you betraying your creator for me now?”

“_Since you have all moved into the Tower, Captain, my parameters have been expanded to the care of all of the Avengers and their auxiliary persons, not simply Sir. So no, I am not betraying him. I am merely warning you that your hiding place is about to be discovered._”

“I’m not-- I’m not hiding, JARVIS. This is a common floor. And it’s his Tower, he’s allowed to be here.”

“_As you say, Captain._”

Not for the first time, Steve wonders if Tony purposefully programmed JARVIS to express that level of complex sarcasm, or if the AI had developed it on his own.

Despite his protests to JARVIS, Steve finds himself taking a steadying breath when the elevator doors swish open across the room. The fact that Tony doesn’t immediately announce himself when he steps into the strategy room is telling enough. Steve keeps his eyes on the recording in front of him, even as his senses tune to Tony’s appraising silence.

In the end it’s Steve who glances over his shoulder at his teammate when the silence continues to stretch on. Tony’s changed out of his undersuit, now padding around in slightly ratty jeans and a faded, soft looking t-shirt. There’s an ice pack taped around his shoulder.

“Tony,” he greets, keeping his tone even.

“Hey, Cap. Hard at work down here? You haven’t even changed out of your suit yet.” Tony saunters towards him, his casual stance just a touch too forced. Back when they had first met on SHIELD’s Helicarrier, Steve had fallen into the trap of Tony Stark’s showman bluster hook, line, and sinker. He let it rankle him, then. Now he’s learned to recognize the faintly rehearsed, slightly too sharp corner of his smile, or the cagey look in his eyes.

Tony is wearing his “we have to talk about something neither of us are going to like” expression. 

_Shit_. Steve squares himself up from where he’d been leaning against the console, gesturing towards it. “Just thought I’d get some work done, while it’s still fresh.”

“You’d think with perfect recall like yours, you could do that at any time. But injustice never sleeps, so neither does Captain America, right?”

Steve barely fights the urge to roll his eyes, a tight smile on his face. Tony is a lot easier to handle now that Steve understands where the verbal traps are, and how not to fall for them. “I’m not exactly losing sleep, Tony.”

Tony finally wanders up beside him at the console table, and up close his posture is even more telling. “Yeah, but you are skipping out on a pretty great victory dinner--”

“I was almost done here. I’m hardly going to miss it.”

“Because, you know, Lang is heading back to the West Coast tonight. Surprised Pym actually let him hang around that long, really. You’d think he would let go of some old grudges--”

“_Tony,_” Steve finally cuts him off. “Just get on with… whatever it is you came down here to say.”

Tony sways a little on his feet, his face screwed up in overly dramatic offense. “Cap! I thought you were supposed to be our great leader? Sensitive, wise, a good team player?”

He shoots his teammate what he hopes is his most unimpressed stare. “Never claimed to be any of that. Say what you’re gonna say before I--”

“What? Go find somewhere _else_ to hide?” A faint smirk is the only acknowledgement Tony makes for his irritated sigh. “Alright, cards on the table: I came down here to warn you. There’s an intervention brewing upstairs, so you might want to prepare yourself to be cornered by a wily Russian spy and a birdman with enough sass and good intentions to rival yours.”

Steve lets that sink in for a moment. “An... intervention,” he repeats slowly. “For _what, exactly?_ Is this because I keep ducking out of those dates Natasha sends me on?”

Tony makes a wordless gesture at the room. “I think it’s more about this, buddy. I mean, that too, probably. But mostly this.”

“You mean my job. I’m getting an intervention because I’m doing my job.”

“Because you’re _only _doing your job, Cap; you work, train, and do all the fancy PR work. But do you do anything else? Because honestly, Capsicle, I haven’t seen it. And I see you almost everyday.”

“I--” Steve protests, and then thinks of his apartment three floors up from here, spacious and clean with few personal effects. Not like his and Bucky’s old apartment, with every shelf and drawer bursting with bits and bobs, scraps and art supplies, dog-eared books and bent comics. He thinks about the locked room on his floor, full of half-finished canvases, of faces he can recall perfectly as if it were yesterday and not seven decades ago.

_Morita. Gabe. Dum-Dum. Monty. Dernier. Colonel Phillips. Howard. Peggy. Bucky._

One day they might be joined by new faces, the faces of this new family he’s learning to have. One day he might bring them all out into the light, be able to show them to the world without feeling like he’s scooping his heart right out of his chest. But he’s not there yet. He’s not ready.

He’s not ready to let them go.

“I went on that road trip after we defeated Loki…” he manages at last. The turn of his thoughts have settled like a stone in his lungs. 

“Yeah, okay,” Tony drawls. His eyes are sharp, too knowing, and Steve wonders exactly when it was that he and Tony had learned to read each other. They’ve come so far from their first biting arguments. They could even be called friends now - the kind of friends that don’t bullshit or pull punches. “You mean you went off on your bike to brood at America’s great landscape for a few weeks. Look. Cap. Steve. You know I’m the last person to lecture you about coping with shit.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“_Anyway_,” the engineer continues, only louder, “I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. But if I agree with them…? Steve, you know it’s there.”

He scoffs, but flounders to come up with a proper argument. “I’m _fine_, Tony.”

It sounds like a weak lie even to his own ears. And Tony’s disbelieving frown tells him it’s not any better to someone else. “Try again, Cap. You almost had me convinced there.”

“I thought the intervention was coming _later_,” Steve says.

“It is! I swear. This is not a come-to-Jesus talk. I don’t do those. I would burst into flame if I did one of those. Look, I come bearing gifts.” Tony makes a grand gesture towards the table, beckoning Steve’s attention away from him. “JARVIS, unlock file SDPC-211950 for Steve, please. Give him full access like we discussed.”

“_Of course, Sir._”

A new screen is projected above the table, files cascading down for several rows. Steve peers at the names, simple alphanumeric codes that hold no meaning to him. “Tony… what is this?”

Tony has that look again. On anyone else, Steve would call it calculated. And it is, he supposes. It’s Tony hesitating, literally calculating the odds of something Steve can’t see. “So… I know it helps _me_ to just... _obsess_ over all the details of a problem until I can either figure something out or reach the end so I can let it go-- is that too self-centered? My shiny new therapist tells me I’m a fixer instead of a listener and that I try to just fix people’s problems instead of giving them support. Our last couple of sessions have been about _Love Languages_ and shit.”

That’s about as far as Steve gets before he starts looking through the list of files. Sometimes it’s better just to let Tony go and work through his own thoughts without interruption. He finds a text file first, which he briefly scans.

_The incident in SHIELD SCI-TECH LAB 2, February 1st, 1950, is reported as follows…_

His eyes stumble over the date.

“Is this…?”

“It’s everything dad had on the day Peggy Carter disappeared.” 

Steve gazes at the screen, reading the line “_Director Maragaret Carter came into contact with the Tesseract at exactly 14:09:38, as shown by security footage” _over and over again. 

“He spent years trying to make sense of what happened. When he wasn’t out searching for you, he was researching what happened to her. He had boxes of stuff: film reels of experiments, journals full of notes on the Tesseract and what he could figure out about the Pym Particle - it’s no wonder Pym kept them from him with how much snooping he did.” Tony shrugs at the end and winces, hand coming up to massage his sore shoulder.

His heart does a dangerous flip. Steve’s hand shakes as he brings up one of the video files. And there she is. The footage is all in grainy black and white, both nostalgic and somehow _foreign_ to him now in this future of living color and eye-searing clarity. But she’s… His breath shudders in his chest.

Peggy is there, arguing with Howard with her face drawn in silent fury. Steve watches them in dreadful silence as they bicker over the glowing cube sitting mere feet away, watches as Howard starts up the machine despite Peggy’s obvious protests. Just looking at it leaves Steve cold, because it looks familiar, because he’s _seen something like that before_ in one of HYDRA’s labs. _‘Howard,’_ he thinks in horror, _‘what were you doing?’_

The entire scene plays out before him: Peggy attempting to stop the experiment, the Tesseract being knocked from its housing, Peggy rushing to catch it before it hits the floor. And then the room explodes into light, and even though there’s no sound in the video Steve can still hear it because it's a sound that's been seared into his memory.

“It looks like what happened with Schmidt, on the Valkyrie,” he says softly.

Beside him, Tony stiffens. “Is that what happened?”

“You didn’t read the reports? They debriefed me after I woke up.”

“That wasn’t in the report. Just that Schmidt died in the altercation. Not that he…”

“He touched the Tesseract barehanded… and it looked like this.”

Upon request, JARVIS plays those few seconds back for them. The light blooms from the Tesseract, nearly whiting out the inferior security camera, making the forming vortex almost indistinguishable. “This is different,” Steve points out. His words sound distant, and it feels like his entire world has been rocked off its axis all over again.

He’s watching the woman he cared so deeply for disappear. Watching it over and over again, and there’s a terrible weight to that. A helplessness. But even more than that, all Steve _needs_ is an answer.

He indicates the portal. "When Schmidt disappeared, there were stars. Like Loki’s portal over the Tower.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he winces. But if the reminder of an all-encompassing vortex into space and the trauma it caused has any effect on Tony, he doesn’t show it.

Instead, Tony makes a soft sound under his breath, peering at the footage before them. “So what changed?” And then he seems to shake himself, physically taking a step back. “We’ll figure it out, Cap. We can start tomorrow if you want, but we’ll get answers for you. Even if the answer isn’t...” He trails off, only shrugging to finish the thought that neither of them want to voice.

It’s only then that Steve realizes exactly what Tony is offering. _We_ will figure it out. _We _will get answers. “Tony…”

Tony doesn’t quite meet his eyes, almost embarrassed as he answers gruffly, “But not until tomorrow! You’ve got a dinner to get to first. Or else Romanov might actually find a way to kill me with her mind.”

And just like that, the emotions that have been swelling up just under his ribs, threatening to suffocate him, burst. A shocked little breath of laughter leaves him, and Steve finds himself shaking, _laughing_. “That’s playing dirty!” he huffs.

Tony grins. “You haven’t seen playing dirty yet, Cap.” 

Steve actually does roll his eyes now. “Really? That’s what you’re going with?” Tony’s eyes spark with wicked humor, and Steve is quick to change tracks. “Tony… thank you for this.”

The other man shrugs dismissively. “Don’t mention it, Cap.”

“No, Tony, it’s… I really appreciate this.” Steve turns to him, fixing him with what he hopes is the full weight of his gratitude.

In response, Tony bristles, not unlike a cat that’s had its tail stepped on. “Right. I’m leaving,” he says quickly, already backing away.

Steve smothers a smile. “You’re a great teammate, Tony.”

“Speak of this to _no one. Ever.”_

“Your friendship means a lot to me!” he finishes, all but shouting the words at Tony’s quickly retreating back. Once the elevator doors have closed again, thanks to Tony’s hasty button pressing, he starts to chuckle. 

Who knew that sincerely thanking Tony Stark would be the thing to finally shut him up?

“_Captain, shall I close and save the file?_” JARVIS interjects serenely.

Steve takes one more moment to gaze at the screen, at Peggy Carter’s face frozen in steely concentration in the image. “Yeah, JARVIS,” he sighs. “Thank you. I’ve got a dinner to get to.”

They’ll find answers soon enough.

\--------------------2---------------------

**English Countryside - Spring, 1944**

Even before the serum and the war, Steve had never done well with inactivity. A tiny bit of boredom and in his mind he’s a child again, fighting fever or his own lungs and forced to remain in bed for days on end. Back then, his drawings had helped and so had Bucky, who would sit at his bedside even into adulthood and play cards, or chess, or just talk his good ear off until Steve threatened to hit him with a pillow. 

For months the war had kept them all busy. Working behind enemy lines to systematically eradicate HYDRA meant that they were constantly on the move, constantly on their guard, leaving little time for the hurry-up-and-wait pattern that the rest of the Allied armies typically experience. And so being suddenly given two week’s leave had left him… restless.

Bucky would say _restless_ is his natural state.

It took less than three days of aimlessly wandering the SSR London headquarters, struggling to find something to do, before Peggy Carter had gotten fed up with all of them and packed them into a truck bound for the countryside. _“Forget the Blitz. Between Dugan’s idea of relaxing and **yours**, Captain, headquarters may not survive. Pack up and be ready to ship out at 0800,” _she’d said, blocking his way into the war room that morning. 

(Comparing him to Dum-Dum had been a low blow. Steve is just trying to find a way to be _useful_. Him hanging around the training rooms or the war room, developing his skills, is not the same as Dum-Dum’s raucous adventures that he drags half the Howlies into.)

Peggy drives them to a little village a few hours outside of London, small enough to be mostly untouched by the bombings, picturesque and ivy-covered with a grand hotel tucked away under forested lanes. After they’d checked into the inn, they’d all been waved away to go take in the air, explore the village, swim in the river, or _anything _that did not include maiming or property damage. And that, somehow, is how Steve had ended up... here.

“My family would come here on holiday when I was a child. My brother and I would spend our summers on these paths and in these fields, having grand adventures.” Peggy walks beside him and he has to consciously slow his pace to match hers. He’s not used to _this_, for a number of reasons - not used to calm strolls down shady forest lanes, not used to being with Peggy in a scenario that isn’t framed by the war. Not used to being _alone with any woman_ in a social… possibly romantic setting?

Hell, is this a date? Does a gal you work alongside asking to take a walk with you count as a date?

“Is it like you remember?” Steve lets his eyes wander through the trees and back to Peggy, catching in the way the dappled sunlight gleams in her hair. 

She flashes a small, impeccably crimson, smile in his direction and his heart slams into his ribs. “Do you mean this place or the adventures?”

“Both?”

“Hm. It looks the same, mostly. The trees seemed so much taller when I was a little girl. The forest so much deeper. It’s both less and more magical than I remember, somehow. Like walking inside a dream. As for the adventures…” Peggy’s smile widens, “those are just as grand. I may not be a knight, but I’m still travelling the world. Fighting evil and all that.”

It’s easy to imagine, a little girl with bouncing curls and an iron will running around these woods, brandishing make believe weapons and finding adventure in every shadow. Steve can see that child in her now in the way her eyes sparkle at the memory. He’s never seen Peggy quite like this before. It’s beautiful, precious, and dangerous, because Steve could spend a lifetime learning this Peggy. He aches for things he doesn’t know how to ask for: to take her hand in his and walk arm-in-arm. To have her smile at him like this for the rest of the day and after. 

It’s not lost on Steve that he can run headfirst into battle armed with only a shield and his own determination, but the thought of asking a top class dame like Peggy if he can hold her hand leaves him tongue-tied. If Bucky were here, he’d never let Steve hear the end of this. (He’s not going to let Steve hear the end of it anyway, here or not.)

“Your head is halfway across Europe still. Do you even know how to relax and enjoy the moment, Steve?”

Steve blinks, his mind backtracking away from his spiralling thoughts once more. Peggy’s scolding is sharp but teasing, her faint smile taking the sting out of her words. It’s all he can do not to instinctively sway closer. “It’s not that... it’s the nerves. You’re still the longest conversation I’ve had with a woman, it’s a little surreal,” he says with self-deprecating humor. That’s easier than admitting just how far gone on Peggy Carter he is.

Peggy scoffs at him. “And I suppose those chorus girls in the USO communicated with you through interpretive dance, did they?”

_‘Are you jealous?’_ he almost asks, but swallows it back. He’s discovered how fun she is to rile up. Just… not too far. He still has some very uncomfortable memories of her pulling a gun on him in Howard’s lab. “The girls were great. Real stand up ladies - but sometimes it felt more like I was being talked at than talked to. Nothing like this.”

“And you didn’t… find someone nice to talk to while on tour across the country? An adoring fan, perhaps?”

His steps slow, causing her to turn a little more in his direction. “Maybe I was still waiting for the right partner,” he suggests.

And this, to Steve’s delight, gets a reaction; something warm and vulnerable flickers across Peggy’s face. It’s gone before Steve can put a name to it, but it’s _there_ and she’s let him see it, even for the briefest of moments. She starts away from him, stops after only a few steps, and turns back with her expression now schooled in a shrewd frown. “Does that mean that Private Lorraine was your first kiss, then?”

His face heats. “What? No, no, it uh…” Steve hastens to join her again, smiling sheepishly. “That was Jane Holton, a girl we knew back in Brooklyn. I was waiting for Bucky to get off shift at the pier and saw her being harrassed by some jerk and his friends. And, well…”

“Was this another stop on your ‘map of places I’ve been beaten’?”

“I might’a gotten thrown into a dumpster or three, yeah,” he laughs. “Bucky had to come pull my ass out of the fire for that one. But Jane appreciated it anyway. We walked her home and she kissed me square on the mouth to thank me. I had an asthma attack right there on her doorstep.”

At his side, Peggy gasps, her hand flying up to cover her mouth. It’s only when he sees her shoulders beginning to shake that he realizes she’s laughing at him. “Oh. Oh, no--haha I’m sorry. Steve. I shouldn’t--”

“Yeah, yeah,” he sighs.

“It’s very sweet.”

His chest is tight, not dissimilar from an asthma attack, as they continue along the path. If not for the torrent of butterflies in his stomach, he’d be worried about it. 

"I rather miss when I was just a touch taller than you,” Peggy says after a while, breaking their comfortable silence. 

Steve tips his head in her direction, a brow arching. "You do?"

She smiles, brilliant in the soft spring sun. "Oh yes. It would have made some things easier. Now you've got half a bloody foot on me."

He hums and slows to a stop in the middle of the path, considering. And then he crouches just slightly, enough that they are on familiar ground again and he has to look up just a little to meet her eyes. "Like this?" he asks innocently.

It makes her laugh again; a sound so bright and clear that his fingers itch for his sketchbook. Her laugh makes him think of spring days, of wind through the trees. Of the little blue flowers his mother kept in the window box of their tiny apartment. He’d make a fool of himself a thousand times over to keep hearing it, he thinks. "Yes, much easier. Thank you." She leans in, his heart tripping in his chest as she presses the smallest of kisses to his cheek.

Steve blinks at her, at her gentle knowing smile, feeling like he's floating off the ground as he rises back to his full height.

"You've got lipstick on your face now," Peggy teases. "Whatever shall your men think of you, Captain?"

“They’ll never let me hear the end of it, that’s for sure,” Steve jokes weakly.

“Mm, we can’t have that.” Steve fights not to shiver as her fingers stroke over his cheek, rubbing away the offending mark. “There. Now it’s our secret.” Peggy winds her arm around his, taking the step that he’s been struggling with this whole time. “And you didn’t even have an asthma attack. Isn’t that wonderful?”

He sighs dramatically, unable to hide his grin. He feels giddy. Like he’s barely one hundred pounds again and could float right off the ground. “Really? You’re going to use that against me now?”

Peggy’s eyes sparkle wickedly. “I’m a spy. That’s the entirety of my job description.”

“I’m already regretting this...”

Arm-in-arm, they round a bend in the path, only to stop short. Ahead of them, the path winds down into a little valley, a moss-covered bridge crossing a trickling stream. A figure stands on the bridge, leaning his elbows against the stone wall and gazing down into the water as it tumbles over the bed of rocks below.

It’s Bucky standing there on that bridge. The sight of him has Steve’s stomach sinking; not because Bucky is here, or not even because Bucky is alone. No, something sick and worried churns in Steve’s gut because Bucky has that look on his face. The one that he wears when he thinks Steve won’t notice. As if Steve could ever not notice. Bucky’s face is blank, his eyes not gazing at the water below but somewhere much farther away, on things that Steve is afraid to consider. 

The silence that surrounds him is something terrible and profound, like a gaping chasm separating him from the peaceful forest lane. 

Steve starts forward without even pausing to think about it. The tug at his arm, the slightest hesitation before Peggy shuffles forward with him, is what stops him. He winces. “Sorry, but I need to talk to him. I can walk you back to the hotel, if you’ll just wait--”

“Steve,” Peggy cuts in.

“I know the two of you didn’t start off on the right foot. At the bar that night. But he’s not like _that_, you know? He’s got a reputation as--” Steve falters, chokes over the words _someone who steals other people’s girls_. “But he’s just been going through some things.”

She lets him talk, hell, lets him ramble on in senseless apologies, her brows arched. “Oh, I know exactly what that was, that night. I don’t hold it against him, Steve. Jealousy does strange things to a person.”

“Jealous? Of who, _me?_” That makes no sense to him. His face screws up in a frown, trying to picture it. Steve has never had anything for Bucky to be jealous of. Bucky’s always been the successful one. The handsome charmer, the one with potential. Steve’s never had any of that. But…

_“I’m turning into you. This is like some horrible dream.”_

Just as his heart starts to sink, Peggy sighs from beside him. “You know, Captain, for the best strategist we have in this fight, you can be terribly dense.”

“What?”

A sharp nudge sends him forward a step. “Steve, go to him,” is all that Peggy answers.

Steve doesn’t try to come up with a response, only starts down the path in cautiously measured steps. His eyes don’t stray from the figure Bucky cuts leaning against the bridge, so still that he may as well be a statue, something just as old and moss-covered as the bridge itself. It hurts just to look at him. The Bucky that Steve knows has never been as wild as his reputation suggests - he’s quiet and thoughtful in moments, frighteningly insightful, cool under pressure. He’s bright and clear, like sunshine on a cool spring day. But it’s different now, since Azzano.

It doesn’t shock Steve that since the rescue, Bucky’s silences have become deeper and darker. Or that his bright moments are less like spring sunshine and more like sunlight on late winter ice: more fragile, barely covering up something aching and cold. It’s no surprise, given some of the stories the Howlies have told him about their time in Azzano. About the things that weren’t required to go in the reports. Bucky never talks about it, and Steve has quickly learned not to push him on it. 

He _wants to_, though. Every time Steve thinks of Bucky on that table, about all the time he fucking _wasted_ playing a bigshot star in the USO, something twists like a knife in his gut.

Bucky’s head snaps up before Steve gets within a few yards of the bridge. The absent expression on his face is gone, his eyes too-sharp until they find Steve’s. “Hey,” Bucky greets after a moment of heavy silence.

“Hey, Buck.” It takes a moment for Steve to realize he’s stopped altogether, not daring to move closer. And _this_ is different too. There’s never been a moment in Steve’s life, until now, that he’s ever hesitated to be in Bucky’s space. He moves forward purposefully, refusing to let it take hold. “What are you doing out here?”

Bucky shrugs. “Enjoying some peace and quiet. Got tired of Dum-Dum tryin’ to start a riot in the square.” His smile is just the same as it’s always been, all dry humor and a sparkle of something a little devilish at the corners. But it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

_‘Did you?’_ Steve wants so badly to ask. _‘Or did you slip when you thought no one was looking again?’_

He doesn’t get the chance to ask anything, though, because Bucky’s eyes glance past his shoulder, a sudden frown on his face. “You out here with Carter?”

His flush probably does the talking for him. “We were, ah, just takin’ a walk?”

“Steve, what the hell’re you doing talking to me when you’ve got a nice date with your girl?”

“She’s not my girl…” Is he just imagining the razor sharp edge when Bucky says _your girl?_ Is he reading too much into Peggy’s words before she’d shoved him this way? 

Because Peggy is not _his girl_. That’s not something they’ve talked about, not something Steve has stopped to consider outside of distant fantasies. (Steve’s never held too tightly to the white picket fence dream. Before, it was something he was never going to have. But maybe, just maybe, he could want that with Peggy. A nice house just outside the city, and Bucky could have the house next door so they’d always be close…) It would be a bitter pill to swallow, but to make Bucky happy, well, Steve would move heaven and earth. Has at least twice, now.

“You’re kidding, right?” Bucky drawls, jolting Steve out of his train of thought. “You bein’ thick again, Steve? She wants to be. That look she was givin’ you that first night could’ve called down an air raid it was so obvious.”

“Really?” Steve says flatly. 

“Stop wasting time talking to me. A dame like that isn’t going to wait around for your lazy ass.”

“I’ll leave when you tell me you’re doing alright.”

Ah, there it is. The now familiar flicker of unease goes across Bucky’s face. Steve’s hands barely stop from reaching for him, wanting to chase that look away without knowing how. “I’m fine,” Bucky scoffs at him, too quickly. “Now get out of here, punk.”

“Barnes, this would be faster if you just walked the rest of the way back with us.”

Steve isn’t the only one who jumps at the sound of Peggy’s voice. She’s appeared at his side again, and somehow he’s been so focused on Bucky that he hadn’t even noticed. Then again, neither had Bucky, whose face does an impressive shift in expressions from shock to annoyance to something unreadable. In the end, Bucky leans back with his elbow propped on the wall of the stone bridge, the very picture of the careless charmer.

“Little forward, don’t you think, Agent? You askin’ me to step out with you _and_ Steve will be the talk of the town.”

It’s a tone that Steve is far too familiar with, as well as the sly smile on his friend’s face. “_Bucky_,” he admonishes, hoping his flush isn’t as obvious as it feels.

Peggy, on the other hand, isn’t even fazed. “Really, Sergeant? That’s what you’re going to go with? Puritantical nonsense?”

“We both know the army runs on idle gossip. Seemed like a good bet.”

“There, you have a point. But it doesn’t change the fact that it would be faster to argue if you did it while walking.” Peggy shifts, propping a hand on her hip. She’s unyielding, not letting Bucky twist her around with his teasing, and Steve’s chest goes oddly warm at that. 

Bucky seems to realize this at the same moment Steve does, because he sighs quietly. “You’re not going to give up until I come back with you, huh?”

“No.”

“She’s right, Buck.” He steps closer to bring a hand up, squeezing Bucky’s shoulder. “Come back with us.”

“Yeah, yeah, when did you turn into such a mother hen? This payback for all the years of me playing nursemaid while you glared at me from the bed?”

Steve smiles, and it softens his teasing response: “I have to make it up to you somehow, right?”

“Geez,” Bucky mutters. “Alright, alright, I’m coming. Put those eyes away.”

Steve looks away to hide how his smile widens, turning it on Peggy instead. _Thank you_, he mouths quickly, and, feeling bold, offers her his arm. “Agent Carter?”

There’s a barely suppressed smile playing about her mouth, her eyes dancing. “Thank you, Captain Rogers,” she says primly, hooking her arm into his. “How nice of you gentlemen to escort a lady back.”

He can practically hear Bucky rolling his eyes. “A real comedy act, the pair of you. Maybe you should go back on tour and take Carter with you, Steve.” He falls into step on Steve’s other side all the same. They start off together, the three of them this time, down along the gently rippling stream through the forest.

“I would look stunning in those chorus dresses,” Peggy replies sagely. She flashes a wicked little glance in Steve’s direction before leaning around him. “So, Barnes. What more can you tell me about Jane Holton?”

Oh no.

But whatever protest Steve tries to muster gets lost, because Bucky tips his head back and _laughs_, sweet and bright and _Bucky_ again. “Steve! Steve, you told her about _that?_”

“Aw, hell,” he mumbles without meaning it. It’s hard to be embarrassed, hard to worry about what he doesn’t yet understand, when the two of them are here on either side of him, growing more comfortable with every step they take along the path. Because right now, in the middle of the war, Steve feels at home again.

\--------------------3---------------------

**Camp Lehigh, Wheaton, New Jersey - February 1st, 2013**

“Howard?” Peggy calls.

Her words echo back at her, the only sound in the dark room. Unease prickles along her skin. Everything is unnaturally still, in a way that SHIELD has never been. Her eyes squint into the darkness, blinking the cascade of spots from her eyes. Half-blinded, she wanders through the darkened lab, steadying herself on empty tables, feeling the layers upon layers of dust under her hands.

Something is wrong. Something is horribly wrong.

That only becomes more apparent as she follows the route she had taken just minutes ago back out of the labs. Everything is lonely and dark, the air musty and still in her lungs. There’s only dead, cold halls to greet her, and a chill runs down Peggy’s spine. The bustling SHIELD base is deserted, abandoned. To Peggy, it’s all changed in a blink. But as she sets off through the halls that are so familiar and now so _wrong…_

Each new possibility running through her mind fills her with more apprehension than the last. 

Her office is gone. Peggy stands at the place where her door used to be - where it was _minutes ago_. She breathes deep against the panic rising in her throat. _‘Be calm,’ _she thinks desperately. _‘Think it through. Keep moving forward.’_ If she freezes now, she’ll never be able to move again.

“_Ah, Director Carter. I wondered just when you would reappear. The calculations were endless._”

Peggy jolts as the voice crackles from the intercom overhead. Her hand goes for her service pistol, only to catch air. Her gun had been left in her office, in her desk drawer where it belongs. The only tools she has with her are the prototypes she’d pocketed from Howard’s demonstration: the experimental tracker, the untested stun baton, and the supposedly useless bauble. Instead she scrambles for the scraps and detritus leaning against the wall, grasping a length of rusted metal and holding it at the ready.

“_There’s no need for violence, Director, I assure you. We are all allies here, are we not?_” The sly little chuckle is like ice down her spine. She knows that voice.

“Zola,” she calls, eyes darting in each direction down the hall.

“_Correct, Fräulein. This way. It’s time that we spoke, face-to-face.”_ Lights flicker on, buzzing discordantly overhead. Peggy watches the slow burn of them down the hall, clenching her hands around the length of metal before cautiously moving towards them.

The lights guide her through the base, a new set coming on in the direction she’s meant to go. The bulky security cameras above turn as she passes, observing her, making the hair stand on the back of her neck.

“What are you doing here, Zola?” she asks, eyes darting into corners as she’s guided from room to room. Everything in her knows that this is a trap. 

“_You will find out soon enough. Come._”

She’s been led into what was once the archive room. There’s only empty shelves now, covered in dust and cobwebs. But she doesn’t have time to examine that observation, to panic about what that probably means, because one of the units at the far end of the room shudders ominously, and slides to one side to reveal a set of elevator doors which slide innocently open for her.

When she hesitates, Zola’s voice coos mockingly from overhead. “_I promise, Director, that it is quite safe. There are no traps waiting for you. There is little logic in it._”

In the end, Peggy steps into the elevator and lets it take her down, and down, and down.

The elevator opens out onto a pitch black room. Peggy clutches her improvised weapon in her hands as she steps out, her footsteps echoing on the concrete and steel. The lights from the elevator illuminate a computer console up ahead, and Peggy walks towards it. It’s not until she almost reaches it that the lights come on, revealing banks of mainframes on all sides. Peggy stops in the center of the room, turning so she can look at each row of them, ten or twelve banks of them on each side of her, stacked double, lights flickering and data tapes spinning peacefully inside.

Howard had spoken to her only weeks ago of the future of computing machines, of the designs that were being attempted. Someone had only just succeeded in creating a machine to hold one million bits of memory, and Howard had spoken endlessly about what all that power could do. What, then, would all these machines be capable of?

An electronic flicker in her peripheral has Peggy turning back to the computer console in the center of it all. The wide screen has come on, sparks and shoots of green flashing across it, in undulating patterns. And then it becomes a shape that she can recognize…

It’s a face.

“_Hello again, Director Carter._”

_Arnim Zola._

“What is this?” Peggy says incredulously. She lowers the metal in her hand, inching closer to the screen. “What game is this? What are you doing… here?” 

“_It is no game, Director. I have been waiting here for decades. Watching. Calculating. Waiting. I admit, I had wondered just when you would be seen again._” The face on the screen shows no expression, only the blank, round forms of Zola’s glasses and a flat mouth that flickers with light only when he speaks, but the voice is _smirking _at her. She can hear it in every word.

“What do you mean?” she interrogates, her voice tight. “Decades? You can’t have been here.”

_“Let’s not be coy. You are no fool, Fräulein, surely you have guessed. The date is the first of February, 2013. Exactly sixty-three years since you disappeared from Stark’s lab._”

Her heart plummets into her feet. “You’re lying. You can’t be here, as... whatever _this _is. Where is the real Zola?”

But even before Zola answers, in her heart Peggy knows it’s the truth. There’s no other explanation for the things she’s seen. “_How quaint. I did not imagine you the type to deny the obvious, Director Carter. But very well. If it is proof that you require…_”

The rest of the lights in the room click on. Rows and rows of mainframes stretch out into the distance, seemingly endless. As the lights slowly come on farther and farther out, the more rows of computing towers there are.

“_In 1972, I was given a terminal diagnosis,_” Zola explains. “_Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving, on the two hundred thousand feet of data banks you see before you. You are standing in my brain, Director._”

“Impossible…” she breathes, her body going cold. “They would have never let you do this.”

“_On the contrary, I was invited. By a dear friend of yours._” The screen to Peggy’s left flicks on, Howard’s picture staring back at her. “_I was told that I could help further SHIELD’s cause, and was welcomed graciously.”_

If possible, Peggy’s heart sinks even further. Her improvised weapon hangs loosely in her grip now, gazing back at Howard’s image, his careless debonair grin that he always had in every photo. _‘Howard, no, damnit. Damnit! How could you?’_ She had _warned him_.

_“Of course,_” Zola continues, “_I also furthered my own._” Zola’s face disappears from the screen, replaced with the flickering image of a tendriled skull that makes Peggy’s blood run cold.

“HYDRA is dead.”

“_Cut off one head and two more shall take its place._” The image doubles, flashes, and Zola is back. “_We were allowed to thrive, a glorious parasite within SHIELD. And as we grew, so too could our power. From within, the new HYDRA could shape the world, feeding crisis. Reaping war. And when history did not cooperate? History was changed._”

Another screen to her right flickers, images of headlines, of grainy, half redacted photos. A silhouette on the roof of a building, a flash of a red star, of fire and death.

Peggy hisses through her teeth. “I don’t believe you. SHIELD would have stopped you, _Howard_ would have stopped you-”

Something else comes up on screen, making Peggy’s words die in her throat. 

_Howard and Maria Stark Die in Car Accident_, the projected headline reads. The date on the line above is December 16th, 1991.

“_Accidents will happen,_” the mechanical ghost of Zola whispers darkly. “_You have not yet realized the true scope of your failure. We have calculated. Waited. And now, HYDRA has won. Soon, our new world order will arise. You have lost, Director Carter.”_

**END CHAPTER 2.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We have calculated. Waited. And now, HYDRA has won. Soon, our new world order will arise. You have lost, Director Carter.”_
> 
> The words themselves seem to reverberate through her, ricocheting between her ribs, and just like that the icy fear that had taken hold of Peggy bursts. What comes roaring into its place is nothing but _rage._
> 
> “Oh no,” she growls. “Absolutely not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! Welcome back to Peggy Carter Vs The Future and All of HYDRA. This chapter is a terrifying 6.3k and it's mostly a montage of Peggy's first day in the future. But it ends with an unexpected reunion so hopefully it's worth it.
> 
> Enjoy everyone! Thank you so much for the super kind comments and kudos that you gave the last chapter.
> 
> As always, thank you to [rogueshadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueshadows) and [SassySnowPerson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DramaticEntrance) for being the Fic Sharing Trifecta of my dreams! And a special thank you to [Wiggle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiggle/pseuds/Wiggle) and [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79) for being so kind as to beta this fic and for KEEPING ME GOING when I was screaming about how fiddly this chapter was. Thank you so much!

\--------------------1---------------------

**Camp Lehigh, Wheaton, New Jersey - February 1, 2013**

_“We have calculated. Waited. And now, HYDRA has won. Soon, our new world order will arise. You have lost, Director Carter.”_

The words themselves seem to reverberate through her, ricocheting between her ribs, and just like that the icy fear that had taken hold of Peggy bursts. What comes roaring into its place is nothing but _rage_.

“Oh no,” she growls. “Absolutely not.”

“_There is no-- What are you doing?_” Zola asks as she turns away from the terminal. Peggy marches around the other side, a nasty little smile on her face as the bulky camera above the screen fights to follow her. “_Where are you going?_”

Around the back of the machine, Peggy peers at the numerous cables, her eyes tracking each of them as they run down into the floor grates and across the room. After a moment’s consideration, she kneels down and takes one in her hand--

“_Do not touch that! Stop--_”

She tugs, and Zola’s voice fizzles out as the cable pulls free. The last warbling note of his automated voice rings in the ensuing silence. Peggy stands, shaking hands curled into fists at her sides, her breath coming heavy. Her mind whirls in several directions at once, a traitorous, pulsing rush of _future, Howard, gone, **HYDRA.**_

She wants to wake up and find that all of this has been a strange nightmare. She wants to _scream._ She numbly walks around to face the now blank computer terminal, and wants nothing more than to scoop up the length of metal and systematically smash it to bits. Her own failure is staring her in the face - how could she not have seen that this could happen? How could she have fallen for Zola’s little peon act the whole time? If maybe she’d pushed a little harder…

She’s failed in the only thing she had set to dedicate her life to.

If Zola spoke the truth, HYDRA had risen from the ashes and burrowed into the organization she had so carefully tried to nurture. Her life’s work has become corrupted. Her friends dead - _murdered,_ she corrects, the word lodging high in her throat. Zola had mentioned Howard, but were there others? How many of her friends had Zola arranged _accidents_ for?

But most of all, everything in Peggy itches to dig her hands in and rip everything that is HYDRA out by the roots.

“This is insane,” she hisses through clenched teeth. 

That’s the moment the elevator starts moving. Peggy jumps, turning only to find the elevator making its ascent towards the archive room. “Damn,” Peggy murmurs. Her eyes lock onto the indicator above the door as she scoops up her makeshift weapon from the floor, barely daring to breathe as the elevator pauses and then begins to descend once more. Looking around frantically, she has no choice but to duck behind a row of mainframe towers and crouch, clutching the length of metal pipe in her white-knuckled hands.

A shudder works through her as the elevator doors creak open, and slow footsteps echo through the chamber. But her hands are steady, and her mind razor sharp. This is easier; dealing with the threat immediately in front of her is easier than trying to process the confusion and _grief_ that’s flooding her. 

“Doctor Zola!” a voice calls, male, cocky, American. It rings in the silence, making Peggy shrink back further out of view. “...Doctor Zola?”

“Maybe he’s not here? Can he even leave?” says a second voice. Also American and male, but far more neutral than the first. 

“Are you kidding? Zola’s already a diva, could you imagine if they let him connect to the internet? Hey Zola!” The first voice ticks up into a shout at the end, and then waits as Zola’s name echoes off the rows and rows of mainframes. “Can you fucking believe this? We came all the way here for the little drama queen not to show. Absolute bullshit.”

“Think he’s pouting about the changes they made to Project Insight, then?”

“Gotta be. Damnit, why are we always stuck dealing with his high-maintenance, coded ass?”

Their voices have moved closer to the center of the platform, nearer to the terminal. There’s a _whump_ of rustling clothing further down the row of mainframes. Peggy steels herself and creeps, crouched as low as she can, down the row. She reaches the end, somehow managing not to make too much noise as the two men grouse at one another.

They’re standing in front of the terminal, their backs to her lousy excuse of a hiding place. They’re both tall and similarly built - career military types with broad shoulders and short cropped hair, both dressed in black uniforms. The black tactical jacket that one is wearing bears the SHIELD emblem on his sleeve, making Peggy’s heart do a sickening leap into her throat. The other has taken his jacket off and draped it over one of the machines, but the SHIELD emblem on it is clearly visible to her as well.

Mere minutes ago, that symbol would have been a great relief to her. But now it only makes Peggy feel ill.

“He made all that fuss about improving and correcting his _life’s great work_ and now he’s not even going to give it up,” the cocky one keeps muttering, his voice crystal clear in the vast space. He has a small object in hand, and Peggy watches as he steps up to the terminal and inserts it into a small, sleek, certainly much more recent addition to the terminal. He doesn’t appear to be satisfied with the results, taking the object out and inserting it again a couple of times. “Zola, we’re here for the rest of the data package. This is your last chance to transfer it!”

“Man, let’s just go back to DC and get the package ready to submit. Our window’s shrinking. The last thing we need is Secretary Pierce breathing down our necks about this.”

Peggy leans a little closer to the edge of her hiding place, tilting her head as she commits their words to memory. The pair of them are inexcusably careless, not only in failing to secure their surroundings but not even caring enough to investigate _why_ Zola isn’t answering them. Peggy sighs soundlessly. What a _mess_ they’ve made of her organization.

“Hey, you hear they’re planning to prep the Asset for this one?”

“No shit. Really?”

“I heard a rumor from STRIKE; Pierce is making sure this is done right and that there’s no room for fuck-ups. We’re too close to actually making a move.”

“The Asset… shit, when’s the last time you think they let _him_ out?”

Her hands clench around her improvised weapon. The urge to take them head on is a siren call in her veins, to just give in and take out all of the rage and grief on them. Maybe keep one conscious to interrogate. But…

Peggy makes her decision quickly, inching out from behind the row of machines. The two are so occupied that they don’t see her creep towards the agent’s abandoned jacket, slip the tiny, inconspicuous tracking chip inside it, and sneak back into cover.

_‘Let’s hope your invention works, Howard,’_ she thinks sadly. _‘It’s all I have to rely on.’_

\--------------------2---------------------

She doesn’t have to wait long for the pair to move on; they don’t linger for more than a few minutes. The cocky one scoops up his jacket without the slightest suspicion, too busy running his mouth as the two agents return the way they came up the elevator. 

Once they’re out of sight, Peggy opens up the compact, peering at the tiny screen to watch the equally tiny map point wander slowly away from her position. She gives them a head start, until the tracker is, she hopes, outside of the building before taking the elevator up herself.

The light of day, when she makes it outside of SHIELD’s offices, is nearly blinding. Peggy takes a deep gulp of fresh air, almost choking on it after being down in the dust and the stillness. When her vision clears, she finds that she’s completely and utterly alone among cracked concrete and weathered buildings. 

Camp Lehigh is nearly unrecognizable to her now.

The main thoroughfare of Camp Lehigh as she knew it is now an overgrown ghost town. The constant shuffle of the army that occupied this base alongside SHIELD is gone. The only sounds now are the birds and the distant metallic rattling of the wind cutting through the buildings and pressing against the rusted walls of warehouses. Peggy swallows back the panic that the sight brings, focusing instead on the tire tracks in the dirt in front of her. She catches a glimpse of a bulky black vehicle speeding away along the main road, and a quick glance at the tracker confirms her assumption: they’re headed west, towards town.

“Good for twenty miles,” Peggy softly repeats Howard’s boastful promise. “Well, it won’t do any good unless I can find a way to keep up…”

The answer is within easy reach. There are cars in the distance, a small cluster of them under the shade of some trees, and Peggy sets off for them at a brisk pace. The question of why there are cars so near an abandoned base is another thing entirely. It’s not until she nears that she sees the barracks, and comes to an abrupt stop.

The wooden buildings and the transport trucks are something right out of her memory, somehow bright and new, when even in her memories the training campus of Camp Lehigh had already been worn in. The old Camp Lehigh has been lovingly recreated down to the foundations. There’s a sign out front as she goes closer, with a painfully familiar silhouette emblazoned upon it and boldly proclaiming _CAMP LEHIGH: BIRTHPLACE OF CAPTAIN AMERICA._

Peggy gazes at the almost cartoonish figure in red, white, the breath tight in her lungs, a bitter taste in her mouth.

And then she goes walking among the row of cars (models that are sleek and futuristic but somehow so very dull and similar to one another) until she finds a worn, rusted pick-up truck in the back with its door unlocked. She finds the keys and the owner’s wallet inside the center console mere moments later. “It really is not your day, is it, Mister Lee?” she asks the wizened face and crooked grin on the driver’s license inside. “I am sorry, it looks like I’ll be borrowing this for a while. But I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t important.”

Thankfully, cars run much the same in the future as cars always have, or at least this one does. It starts and sputters and has a hell of a time climbing up into gear, but soon Peggy finds herself on the road, the tracker flipped open on the dash to guide her. 

\--------------------3---------------------

“I love your outfit, by the way,” the coffee shop clerk beams at Peggy. “It’s so vintage!”

Peggy tucks her change back into Mister Lee’s stolen wallet with a hollow smile and a small amount of guilt. “Thank you, Kelsie,” she responds with a flickering glance at the tag on the young woman’s apron. “Have a wonderful day.” Peggy takes her sugary pastry and cappuccino, forcing a casual hitch in her step as she backtracks to the cafe and claims a window booth with a clear view of the towering, vacant building across the street.

Peggy Carter has been firmly, undeniably in the future for five hours. Nearly four of those hours had been spent tailing the hulking black vehicle at a safe distance, alone with her thoughts and the steady, slowly maddening flash of the tracker. The journey to Washington, D.C. had been a truly mystifying experience. The roads are _enormous _and _crowded _now_,_ choked with sleek cars moving at speeds that make her heart pound. The highways were nothing but asphalt and metal as far as the eye could see, and even under the open sky, through wide stretches of country, Peggy felt boxed in on all sides the whole journey.

And don’t even get her started on the price of petrol. 

Even the coffee has changed. Peggy had stood blinking at terms she had never imagined seeing in a cafe in the US. Along with a truly frightening variety of milks and flavored syrups. But it had only taken listening to the people in line in front of her for Peggy to improvise an order.

She frowns thoughtfully around the lip of her cup. She’d followed the two HYDRA agents here; their imposing car had turned into the service alley behind the building across the street. It’s an old, grand bank building with towering columns that probably once loomed over the intersection, but now seems dwarfed by the shopfronts and department buildings that litter this area. The old bank bears no markings of a SHIELD base, but it wouldn’t be the first time that SHIELD had set up behind the cover of businesses. Or buildings under seemingly perpetual construction, in this case.

Peggy had found a parking lot a few blocks down to stash her stolen truck, returned to this little coffee shop, and settled in to observe the building. And wait.

And wait.

Her knuckles go white around the coffee cup, as brief a moment of vulnerability as she’ll allow. Peggy hates waiting. Especially now, when waiting only leaves her thoughts to turn inward, to the still mind-numbing truth of her own circumstances, and the endless questions that have no answers. How had that damnable cube bring her here? Where had it gone? Had it stayed behind, fixed in place while Peggy moved forward? Why _here_ of all times, and not mere hours, or days, into the future instead? 

Had it intended this? Was the energy lurking within the Tesseract _sentient _enough to have an intention?

Around and around the questions go until she feels sick. Peggy eventually sets the cup onto its saucer with a barely-controlled clatter. What she wouldn’t give for a proper cup of tea right now. Or a HYDRA agent whose nose she could break.

Studying the people around her is a far more productive task. There’s an entire microcosm in this little coffee shop, a glimpse of this mysterious future. The fashion is certainly… different, and incredibly varied. Nothing like the visions that captured the imagination of artists and scientific minds alike. No one looks like a spaceman right off the cover of a science fiction novel, here. While there are still men and women in suits, there’s also a vast number of customers in the coffee shop wearing baggy, soft looking sweaters or overshirts and strangely tight-fitted bottoms. Not all of the women wear make-up and not all of the men are impeccably clean-shaven. 

This future is different, but strangely familiar to Peggy. The devices that these people carry with them are foreign to her, rectangular devices, some small enough to fit in their palms, seem to take the place of newspapers and books, and even typewriters. Strangers cluster around tables with power outlets for their devices, all studiously ignoring one another just as strangers always have. Peggy watches a pair of girls huddled in a booth, both staring at their palm-sized devices until one starts giggling and flips it over to show her companion something on it that sends them both into infectious laughter. A half-asleep looking young man in the booth next to Peggy’s plugs a cord into his larger device, the other end of the cord resting in his ears, his head bobbing tiredly to an unheard tune as he types. Books and notebooks and loose bits of paper spread out on the table around him. Peggy watches him dig around in a backpack for a moment before removing an object identical to the one she had seen the HYDRA agents use, and insert it into another slot in the typewriter/computing machine on the table.

There’s so much to learn just from watching the people go about their daily lives. But will any of it help Peggy formulate a plan? Or give her insight into the SHIELD/HYDRA base across the street?

The answer to that is only a frustrated no.

Eventually Peggy climbs from her booth, which is almost immediately set upon and taken by a man with a briefcase, and shoulders her way through the crowd back out onto the street. The February wind makes her tuck her suit jacket tighter around her. Across the street, the supposedly abandoned bank looms over her, almost watchful. Gooseflesh prickles along her arms, not entirely brought on by the chilly breeze.

With no other option, Peggy sets off walking, taking in the layout of the surrounding blocks, memorizing street names, building placements, anything that could be remotely helpful to her in this new future. She peers inquisitively at the tiny security cameras mounted atop traffic lights at the intersections, and at the similar, bulbous devices hanging on building corners that blink with telltale red lights. 

Interesting.

In the middle of her wanderings, a sign hanging above the street catches her eye. _National Portrait Gallery_, it lists with various arrows, _Ford’s Theatre, Union Station. _And at the bottom of the list: _DC Public Library, Northwest._

“Well,” she muses, “I’ll have to start somewhere.”

\--------------------4---------------------

“I love your dress!” the librarian gushes as she hands Peggy a spare notebook from her desk. “It’s such a great look on you.”

Hm.

“Oh, thank you-- Bernesia, was it? And for the notebook as well.”

The libraries of the future are nothing like those of Peggy’s time. They’re no longer the closed in, almost gloomy buildings with stern looking matrons posted at desks. Everything is bright, open, and inviting. There are larger versions of the same computing devices she’d seen in the coffee shop clustered about the center of the wide open room, but if there was ever a fear, even fleeting, that _books_ had somehow become obsolete in this future, Peggy is soothed to see the countless aisles of them that take up the rest of the building. There’s a dedicated children’s area, full of bright colors and laughing families and children playing. There are donation boxes for winter clothes and food, community flyers, and an area bustling with school aged children that’s marked with a bold _Homework Help_ sign.

The same breadth and diversity of people that she had noticed while walking the streets and in the cafe is here as well. Everyone shares this space, working, studying, browsing, playing. Peggy wonders, fleetingly wistful, if all places are like this in the future.

The _Computer & Technology_ section of the library is a vast, imposing wall of manuals, for things Peggy has never even heard of. But she diligently starts pulling books off shelves to look through, because again, Peggy reminds herself, she has to start somewhere. And apparently computers and these so-called _smart devices_ are everywhere in the future.

(“_For Dummies,_” Peggy spits at the garrish black and yellow volume in her hand that boldly proclaims _Computers for Seniors! For Dummies. _“_For Dummies. _How asinine.” Peggy peers on either side of her, finding the aisle of the library deserted, and sighs before tucking the book under her arm. Why did it have to have the most conspicuous color scheme of the lot?) 

She holds no illusions about becoming miraculously proficient after a few hours of notetaking. But her entire adult life has been comprised of using new and inscrutable technologies, so surely with some effort and some well thought out notes she can at least accomplish being functional? 

Right?

Still, the moment she takes her seat at one of the numerous computers fills her with dread, partway between feeling that she’s about to diffuse a bomb and like the machine may just come alive and bite her if she misuses it.

So finding out that the basic functions of the machine are foreign but not _impossible _to her is relieving and then wondrous. The program called a search engine, she quickly finds, is astounding. The fact that she can put in the address of the bank and can use an _actual mapping service_ to see pictures of all sides of the abandoned bank is amazing. The fact that she can access _traffic footage_ from Washington DC’s Department of Transportation website is _amazing. _

For the moment, the future is vast and wonderful, and better than all of their hopes could possibly have imagined. 

But eventually her research is forced to be cut short as the library closes for the evening. Peggy finds herself back out on the street, armed with a tiny bit more knowledge and intel, but with a new dilemma altogether. Night is fast approaching now, and the streets are growing colder. The money in Mister Lee’s wallet isn’t going to get her nearly as far as she’d hoped when she first found the cash inside. If she’s lucky it may last her for another meal and, if she’s lucky, lodgings for the night. Otherwise she’ll be sleeping in the truck.

There’s also the ticking time bomb of HYDRA’s base hanging over her head. Should she wait, be more methodical in her research? She runs the risk of running out of resources and her problems multiplying with that route. Not to mention that her tracker can be discovered at any time. If it hasn’t been already.

But is it worth all of the dangers that come with running in blind?

Peggy contemplates her choices in the frigid winter twilight, finding a small park bench to sit on. People hurry by her, absorbed with the inscrutable daily lives of the future. There’s a mural on the side of a building across the park that catches her eyes. The giant stylized “A” surrounded by an explosion of color, pouring out across the brick, like nothing Peggy has ever seen before. Inside the sharp, blocky emblem, the artist has meticulously painted other things, lightning bolts and red hourglasses, bows and arrows, and brilliant blue geometric shapes. And a star. An unmistakable white star outlined in circles of red, white, and blue.

In the end, she knows what she has to do. The same thing that she’s always done: moving forward, because there’s no other choice.

\--------------------5---------------------

If Peggy’s honest with herself, she’s no stranger to running in with only the bare minimum and her wits to guide her. And that’s not necessarily a strength, and certainly not advisable for delicate operations on a global scale, but it’s taught her the value of improvising.

Her “vintage” business suit keeps drawing unnecessary attention, but the discovery that charity shops still exist solves the problem well enough for a small fraction of her remaining cash. Armed in slightly ill-fitting denim jeans , a boxy hooded sweater, and worn running shoes, Peggy feels a little less noticeable as she walks the streets. Her second discovery, a miracle in itself, is that corner pharmacies sell what Peggy has learned are called USB drives. She catches sight of the display after changing into her new clothes and doubles back to purchase the largest she can reasonably afford with her limited resources. If anything has become apparent to her from her first day in the future, it’s that they are useful, if not essential. 

Her mind races over an infiltration strategy as her feet carry her back to the abandoned bank. Darkness has finally set in, and Peggy flits in and out of the shadows, squinting as these too-bright lights of the future threaten to blind her every time she passes a shopfront. As she nears the bank, the number of people she passes dwindles into nothing. Until finally, Peggy is mercifully alone, tucked between two buildings across at a safe vantage of the bank. And she waits, and watches.

_God_, she hates waiting.

The stun baton and Howard’s (supposedly useless) prototype stun grenade sit awkwardly in the front pocket of her strange, bulky sweater. The stun baton will be an appropriate weapon, at least until she can acquire a gun. (Are guns still the weapon of choice in this future? Have they advanced to something else entirely? Peggy’s seen nothing to suggest that they have the ray guns that were predicted by the pulp sci-fi genre. But one can never know.)

There should be some use for the prototype - even if Peggy has to throw it at someone’s head.

She fights to keep the tension from coiling in her limbs, doing her best to keep the pre-battle rush from taking hold too soon. How many agents will she find inside? Guards? There can’t be many. To her knowledge, no other vehicle has arrived at the bank, or left from the same service alley. So, two agents that she’s aware of. 

The screech of a door almost makes her flinch. Her eyes zero in on the alley behind HYDRA’s facility. Peggy presses closer to the wall of her own hiding place, watching the human silhouette move in the dim light above the door. The shape moves further into the alley.

The man with a stark white labcoat peeking from under his coat grumbles at his lighter, a slim cigarette hanging from his lips. The fact that he’s standing within mere feet of a bold _No Smoking! _sign doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. Finally the lighter sparks, and Peggy catches a glimpse of his face. Glasses the glint in the light of the flame, unruly dark curls. He’s not one of the field agents she’d followed to DC.

At least three people, then. Peggy huddles against the cold brick, keeping absolutely still as the man smokes and shivers and seems to mutter under his breath about the February chill. She waits until he stubs the cigarette onto the asphalt, and starts back for the door, tucking his bulky coat around himself. Only then does she start to move. 

Even just the brisk walk into the alley has her lungs burning. Her hands ache to be tucked back into the minimal warmth of the sweater’s front pocket. Her skin feels too tight across her skin, but it’s hard to tell if that’s from standing in the cold or from the low simmer of adrenaline that starts to pulse in her veins. Her new soft-soled running shoes barely make a sound on the concrete as she creeps into the mouth the alley after her target. He’s distracted, too eager to get out of the cold, and so doesn’t even turn to look back as he presses something from his coat to a device beside the door and pulls it open. She keeps her distance until he disappears into the doorway entirely before bolting the rest of the way on silent steps.

She grasps the edge of the door just before it swings closed, and slips inside after the man.

What greets her is a long, narrow hall with only a single door at the far end, all blank walls that gleam with the strangely bright fluorescent lighting overhead. The man in the labcoat has yet to notice her, still walking towards the far door, his strange, shiny coat making an ungodly rustling as he pulls it off. Peggy squares her shoulders and goes after him, keeping her body crouched lower, making her steps light and fast. 

“Ayers, open the door,” the man grunts. She closes the distance by a few more feet in the ensuing silence. “What the hell, man, come on! I’m freezing my dick off out here. Did you walk off again--”

A bang echoes from the other side of the door, followed by the softer sound of someone scrambling into action. It’s only then that Peggy notices the tiny black sphere above the door, and bites back a curse. She’d forgotten what security cameras look like in this future. A moment later the door bursts open, causing the man in the labcoat to quickly backpedal away. “Wha--”

“Get back, idiot!” The cocky agent from Zola’s bunker steps into the hall, his eyes glinting dangerously. The scientist’s eyes go impossibly wide as he follows his colleague’s gaze to her.

The agent drops a hand towards his hip, but he doesn’t pull his gun. “Hands in the air!”

_Careless. Sloppy._

Peggy’s hand is already on the palm-sized sphere in her pocket, fingers digging in where there _should have been_ trigger panels to arm a SHIELD-issued stun grenade.

Nothing happens.

For a single moment, Peggy panics. Her heart leaps into her throat. And then she’s launching herself forward with nothing but determination and a prayer, hurling the metal sphere at the agent’s head as hard as she can.

He doesn’t quite manage to flinch out of the way in time. It catches him across the cheek with a stomach turning _thwack_, but his whole body recoils away from the impact. The scientist scrambles away from them; Peggy sees him hit the wall on the very edges of her peripheral vision. With an extra burst of speed, Peggy sprints for them, tucking her body low, leading with her shoulder. She hits the agent with all her weight, shoving him into the doorframe. She doesn’t give him a moment to recover, doesn’t give _herself_ more than a quick breath before aiming a powerful swing at his face, a knee to his side, a jab to block the frantic punch aimed for her. She throws her body into each hit almost before the last ends, unwilling to allow him any moment of reprieve. To overwhelm him.

The man is military trained, however, an agent of the organization that Peggy built (that Zola perverted), and recovers enough to follow her attacks. Her arm is grabbed and she is being pulled in. She barely has the time to turn her face to avoid it being smashed against the wall as the agent turns and slams her into it. Peggy can hear him fumbling for his gun, and she rears her head back to collide with whatever part of the man that she can reach. The spark of pain is dim against the roar of her own blood in her ears. He lets out a foul curse, seeming to abandon his attempt to draw his weapon in favor of trying to immobilize her. She squirms a hand into her pocket and--

The agent lets out a bitten off howl as she jabs the stun baton back into his ribs and presses the trigger. Peggy keeps a grip on the shielded handle of the baton, and twists to shove him away at the shoulder. He drops to the ground, muscles seizing. 

Panting, Peggy watches him go still after a few seconds, losing consciousness, and turns to the doorway. The scientist is still cowering there, and as their gazes meet, the man turns and bolts into the hall beyond. Peggy dives down to snatch the gun from the agent’s holster before giving chase, easily overtaking the man before he can disappear into what looks to be a security room. She grabs the man by the back of his coat collar, pulling him around against the wall.

“How many are stationed here?” she snaps.

The scientist’s eyes are wild, almost rolling in their sockets as he visibly searches for an exit, darting to doors and back to Peggy’s face in fear. When he doesn’t answer promptly, she lifts the gun pointedly and twists a hand in the front of his shirt, jostling him against the wall. 

“How many?” she repeats.

His terrified eyes on the gun, the man all but squeaks, “J-Just the two of us! Agent Ayers a-and me.”

“You’re lying. Do not make me ask again.” Peggy steps closer, drawing herself up to her full height and staring him down. It’s the same glare that’s sent many an agent scurrying for safety in the past, and it seems to do the trick just as well in the future.

“O-Okay. Okay, look. I’m the only night tech. There’s one more guard, but he’s not-- he’ll be back. And he’ll know something is wrong if you don’t let me go.”

Her eyes narrow, trusting this statement just as little as the previous ones. Instead of forcing the issue further, she tugs the scientist away from the wall by his labcoat, pressing the muzzle of the gun against his side. “Take me to your data room. Now.”

His face screws up in confusion. “The what?”

“Take me to where you keep the mission data. Try anything and I will be forced to use this, are we clear?” She nudges the man into motion, following close behind him.

The journey is bewilderingly short. It appears that this secret base is not much of a base at all, but a small outpost with a few halls and a series of offices repurposed into supply rooms or briefing areas. Peggy keeps a sharp eye on the blind corners, expecting an escape of her hostage, or for the man to signal reinforcements. Neither happens and it only sets Peggy further on edge. Was the scientist telling the truth - that only he and two others are currently stationed here?

Then what is the point of this base that supposedly houses information of great importance to HYDRA? Has the USB drive already been passed on to more secure hands? 

They turn down a flight of stairs, descending into the bowels of the building, only to open up to what had clearly once been the bank’s vault. It is not the circular steel door that she is familiar with, perhaps not even the one that was originally present in the building, but something industrial and ominous. A pair of sliding panels, sealed tight, with massive tubes and wires protruding from the walls on either side of it. The whole thing hums deeply, loud enough for Peggy to feel it in her bones as they descend into the chamber. There’s a bank of screens that line one wall, and what looks like a safety deposit room with a heavy propped open door off to their left as they enter. More cables trail into this second chamber, and from where they stand, Peggy can see the machine inside.

A wicked looking chair with a crown of metal, thick manacles attached to the arms. The sight of it and the numerous wires attached to it sends her hair standing on end. There’s something dark and captivating about it, something deeply unsettling that Peggy cannot decipher. All of her instincts tell her that the device is meant for nothing good.

“What is this place?”

The scientist hesitates to answer, keeping his eyes averted and his shoulders stiff. “This is mission operations,” he answers vaguely. “The data you’re looking for is just here. Just take whatever you’re looking for and go.” He gestures at the wall of screens on the far side.

Peggy waves the gun. “You do it. Bring up everything you have on Project Insight.” She doesn’t miss the falter in the man’s steps though he tries to cover it. She keeps her eyes on his back as the man approaches the computers, taking careful steps towards the room with the chair so she can peer through the doors without taking her eyes off him. But if Peggy was expecting to find an enemy lurking there, she finds none. Only the gloomy room with its machine that makes Peggy’s instinct scream.

There’s a file in a receptacle near the door. It’s unmarked but for a faded red star on the front.

“And what is this machine for?”

“...Medical procedures.”

“On who?”

At this, the scientist says nothing.

Peggy trains the gun on him, moving forward a few steps just to see the panic flash in his eyes. “_On who_?” she repeats.

Do his eyes flicker towards the massive sealed doors? “The Asset,” he breathes quickly. “They’re for the Asset.”

She’s heard that name before, back in Zola’s bunker. The agents had whispered the name in twisted glee, in awe of some terrible ally. But is he an ally - who would treat an ally to a machine so evil looking?

_‘HYDRA would.’_ Peggy’s gaze drifts towards the vault doors, something cold as ice settling in her belly. Is she standing in a vault… or a prison? The question unnerves her to the point that it’s all consuming.

“Open the vault.”

Her command startles the man. “I-I can’t--” Peggy turns on him with a withering glare, one that promises _tactical force_. “There’s nothing in the vault worth your time. The Project Insight data is here.” That change of heart is less than comforting as well, and only strengthens her resolve to see what the hell is behind that door. 

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Peggy crowds him towards the doors, watching the scientist’s face twist apprehensively. But eventually he gives in, his hands shaking around the badge clipped to his labcoat. Peggy steps up beside him, making sure she’s in his line of sight, that he can see the gun still trained on him, as he slides it through the console beside the door and presses a series of keys. Lights flash on either side of the door, bathing the vault in an eerie orange glow. The moment the doors unseal is accompanied by a rush of frigid air, mist starting to leak out between them as they slowly trundle open inch by inch. 

Her heart in her throat, Peggy keeps her eyes on those doors, squinting into the icy mist. As the vault beyond becomes clearer, she can make out a shape inside, a contraption taking up the bulk of the room, spilling tubes and wires. It’s so _cold_ like she’s suddenly stepped into the Arctic. She blinks against the lights, against the mist.

It’s a chamber, a cylindrical machine that lets off an even colder air than the vault around it. There’s a little square window at the front--

And Peggy stops breathing altogether. 

Because she’s staring into the face of James Barnes.

**END CHAPTER 3.**


End file.
